Saturday, 28 May 2011

Scary Stuff

While I was going to blog that the Death of Cock-up Linden had been exaggerated, the problems LL is having, still, in taking money off its customers pales into insignificance compared to the bigger issue of Internet Freedom.

It seems that the USA Government in particular and the French (shallow thinking) Sarkozy are, for apparently different reasons, wanting to get involved in internet regulation.

Like a ministry title straight out of 1984, [where the Propaganda Dept. is called Ministry of Truth] the US Government wants to be able to censor what floats around on the internet, exactly like China does..... The bill is named... PROTECT-IP Act.

As we recently saw with the WikiLeaks saga, the US wants to be able to crush news that it considers ‘secret’, the definition of that is, of course, down to the Government of the time.... probably Clinton and his floosie would have been considered Secret too.

All you can do is to actually get your act together and sign a petition for Congress....here... it IS important, probably the most important thing you will do this weekend.

The support this Act is getting is from, for example, the film industry.... companies who think that charging a lot of money for stuff is their god-given right.... so a true collusion of big business and Government is using a reverse ‘freedom’ argument.... i.e. we are protecting your freedom by restricting it.

The G8 summit was, thanks to Sarkozy, also debating the whole issue ... a good summary of the stances people are taking is given... here.

“You can't isolate some things you like about the internet, and control other things you don't." Zuckerberg, quite rightly, said.

The impossibility of you or I protecting our IPR is further highlighted this week by the discovery of fraud in China in relation to some of the biggest financial companies in the world... here... When very large companies are helpless against IP fraud, not even being able to protect their name, you and I have no chance.

IP is an illusion, one the West, in particular, continues to nurture so that software companies and others can continue to rob us blind, and Government, with their hands in the pockets of the multi-nationals, is using as a smoke screen for its desire to control and edit what you think.

I personally think that this will, if it goes through, further split the US and the Rest of The World, and hope some less fascist countries will host some of the larger internet search engines and media sites, taking them beyond US control...

.... if anyone is, really, beyond US control... (they automatically become terrorists when they are)....

I know I had heard this was proposed but did not know the details, thanks for that .. scary stuff. They will probably do a mass fear campaign so it is accepted as a measure of "protection." Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing left in the world as common sense and reason.

I am considering a column or series on "NetWar." I'm not too sure who might want to read it; it wouldn't be "SL/VW focused" but what is happening now, and has been happening for the last 10 years, should concern everyone who uses a computer, particularly those of us who use one extensively.